My Review of "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"

The Lost World: Jurassic Park came out back in 1997. It was a hotly anticipated sequel to the original. I was even excited to watch this despite forgetting that I didn't like it back in the day. Maybe I needed a little reminder as to why I didn't like this movie in the first place. There are a lot of elements of this movie that emulate the first movie but for the most part it fails. I think I would be more into this movie if I enjoyed horror movies back in the day.

It all starts out innocently enough. We have the reintroduction of Malcolm from the last movie. He's down and out because he disregarded the non-disclosure agreement he had signed in the first movie. His career and life was kind of ruined by InGen, John Hammond's company. Nobody believes what he says about Jurassic Park and he's a bit of a laughing stock now.

That is until Hammond summons him again. You'd think that Malcolm would learn by now. That's kind of the recurring thing about this movie that really got on my nerves. Nobody in this movie learns any lessons and continuously makes mistake after idiotic mistake.

Hammond asks Malcolm to go back to one of the islands inhabited by dinosaurs in order to get proof that dinosaurs exist. Apparently, Hammond has lost control over InGen. They decided instead of shipping people to Jurassic Park, why not make a Jurassic Park in the USA and have the dinosaurs come to us.

Malcolm's mission is to prove that dinosaurs exist so that the public will condemn this whole Jurassic Park notion. It's a really flimsy plot for what is essentially a popcorn movie so I won't fault them for that.

Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, Malcolm isn't into this. He's further enticed to go to the island because his paleontologist girlfriend is already on the island. This is kind of his rescue mission to get her off that island. To make matters worse, Malcolm has a daughter that decides to stow away on the trip to the dinosaur island. Already, I don't know how executives or even the makers of this movie wouldn't veto some of these ideas. It is utterly ridiculous but they try to make this happen.

When we arrive to the island the girlfriend, Sarah, seems like a wallflower idiot trying to get herself into worse and worse trouble as the movie plays on. They're also teamed up with an environmentalist idiot, Nick, who has no clue about logic. This is perhaps the worst ensemble team I've ever seen. To make matters even worse there is absolutely no chemistry between any of the characters. They all seem there to exist and just doing some sort of high school play.

In some ways you can watch this as a B movie and laugh at all the idiocy. There are a number of times where the characters will say not to do things and then end up doing what they told others not to do. I think maybe I was watching this the wrong way where the filmmakers knew that these were a bunch of idiots and it's kind of a Looney Tunes comedy.

One of the bright sides of the movie is the action sequences and the visual effects. Although some of it does look dated, there are still a lot of very impressive effects that stand the test of time. It's to be expected as it's by the same people that did the first movie. This is basically what you're really coming to see the movie for. All the extra stuff is just exposition to get to more action sequences.

Overall, this movie is very disappointing. I didn't think it would fall this far from grace but it did. There was a lot of potential with this especially seeing as they were able to pull in some of the original cast for this movie. Seeing as I have to be fair with this one I had to check it out to see if I still didn't like it. At least I can recognize why I didn't like it so many years ago. I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10.